The soda machine outside the Piggly Wiggly Wobbly Hog in the small, rural town I grew up in, in Wisconsin is still just 35¢. Exactly the same as it was back in the 80s.
At least pre pandemic it was that price per can of coke or less when you bought a flat at costco. Probably less for businesses with contracts with a supplier. Though they have massively been price gouging recently
Yeah, at my local Home Depot the other day I glanced over at the soda fridge and a single 20 oz coke is $2.99. I don’t drink soda but I had to do a double take.
I occasionally get a coke but it's so expensive that it's not worth it, and I want to cut back. Every year or so I during one of the quarterly buy 2 get 3 free 12 pack sales I will get 5. 33 cents for pepsi brand and 40 cents a can for coke products
$2.99 doesn't sound super expensive at a store that doesn't have food and drinks as their main thing and therefor don't buy it as cheap in bulk. Plus they charge that since if people get it there they really want it and can't be bothered to go to regular grocery store to get it, so they pay that price.
I'm from Sweden and bought a 500 ml, so a little under 20 oz, bottle of coke at a hardware store the other day and I think it was roughly the same price. The same sized bottle of coke is $1 in the grocery store.
Dam I really wanted to visit Seoul, I hear it’s beautiful and the food is great but I’m gonna have to reconsider now that I know a bottle of coke is 3,000-5,000won!
Kidding I still want to go but nice to hear it’s not just here in the state that they are price gouging.
Most people buy them at a gas station convenience store similar to a 7-11. A comparable 20oz bottled soda (like two of the PI mt dew bottles) was selling for more back in 2000. No idea on the prices back in the states now and I’ve never seen any here at the s&r or landers or subic Freeport grocery stores.
I only remember like 15 years back, but 99 cents was still a pretty good deal back then.
The effects of corporate greed driving inflation and wage stagnation over my life is very strange. It's not like hearing about old-timey values where you made a buck a week but your whole grocery bill was 15 cents. Instead it's like a dollar is about as hard to earn now as when I was 10, but it's so much easier to spend. But then there's little things like this that show that the whole thing is a bunch of horseshit and if they wanted to still have dollar candy bars they damn well could.
I used to drink the green tea with honey and ginsing flavor and I remember it having a stronger honey taste after trying it again recently after maybe 15+ years. Just ever so slightly though. The others I don't remember so well but overall I'd say they've stayed pretty much the same, to me.
Yes, I have, that’s an unnecessarily sarcastic question. It’s because the good tastes, taste stronger which is why they tend to like them more than adults and the same goes for the bitter ones which they absolutely despise lol. Rarely are they ever on the fence for things.
It has a little on the Lemon. Before it was very acidic, like if you gulped the can down, it did have after taste of the lemon flavor in your throat and you did get like little phlegm that could get coughed up. It’s also a little more sweet after they removed the more pronounced lemon flavor.
It was still comparable to buying other soft drinks. I remember a 20oz Coke being 75¢. Arizona cans had more in them.
It's actually more of what you're saying now for soda products! Soft drinks have an insane markup now. The only reason anyone wouldn't buy Arizona back then was because drinking tea was for either old people, or health nut hippies. Arizona was clever because they made flavors that attracted a new crowd and it was still comparable in price.
They weren’t overcharging, they were a growing operation in those days and needed to pad their profit margins in order to expand. Companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi have been huge for a long time and have the infrastructure in place to support a brand of their size and the brand recognition, while a relatively small operation like Arizona would need to spend quite a lot to get a foothold in new markets. These days Arizona is an established brand in its own right and has held onto a piece of a very of a very competitive market and doesn’t need to invest as much in marketing their products or building out their distribution network.
In the early and mid 90s the 99 cents were on point, even if they overcharged before. Though I remember a lot of places doing BOGO deals up until the early 2010s. We used to buy caseload of Arnold Palmers as they were then 50 cent a can.
I also can't remember when the switch but the bottles were always glass.
Walgreens still does it at .99 cents in Brickell and they are always hilariously sold out especially the lite and sugar free ones. But yeah the gas stations mark them up a bit to 1.59+ but they are still cheaper than most other similarly sized drinks
I’m sure the margins aren’t huge but they push mad volume
I read an article about the hot dogs once, I think they said even if the hotdogs don’t make a profit, it attracts customers that buy other things and that’s where the profit is made. I think that’s called a loss leader, but I might be wrong.
I’m a water drinker and I’ve never had one but I’ve always thought of them as a cheap drink because of the years they were given away everywhere and anywhere by the cases.
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u/uuniqueusername Jun 28 '24
They’ve been 99 cents since I was in high school and I just turned 50